Are we sending a bit too much information into the cosmos?

by Ian O'Neill on February 7, 2008

Recent transmissions included sending a Beatles track into space (credit: Ian ONeill)
On Monday (February 4, 7 pm EST) NASA’s Deep Space Network (DSN) sent a transmission toward the North Star, Polaris. The transmission sent was the song “Across the Universe” by the Beatles intended for any sufficiently advanced extra terrestrial life to listen to. Although this is a nice gesture and may nurture Beatles fans beyond our solar system, some scientists have expressed concerns for advertising our planet’s location to the universe, just in case the aliens listening in aren’t that friendly after all…

Scientists attending the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) “Sound of Silence” meeting at Arizona State University in Tempe this week are worried. Their concern focuses on some aspects of the scientific community who want to advertise and educate sufficiently advanced lifeforms beyond Earth about our presence and location in the cosmos. Previous efforts have included information about our biology on the Voyager and Pioneer probes, and a broadcast by the Arecibo observatory in 1974. These attempts at communication plus accidental “leakage” of TV and radio signals can all travel vast distances through space and perhaps be received by aliens.

The main argument against trying to communicate with other civilizations is the possibility that if there are aliens out there listening in, then perhaps they might not be friendly. By giving away our location, critical facts about our society, biology and intelligence, we have already given possible alien aggressors a strategic advantage. This threat is obviously very far-fetched, but sending information about our current state of humanity will be inaccurate when signals are received in hundreds, thousands or millions of year’s time, perhaps putting our future generations in a negative light.

“Before sending out even symbolic messages, we need an open discussion about the potential risks [...] It’s very charitable to send out our encyclopedia, but that may short-change future generations.” – Douglas Vakoch of the SETI Institute, Mountain View, California.

Vakoch is not concerned that we are risking an alien invasion any time soon, but does highlight the need to discuss the implications of attempted extra-terrestrial communication in an open scientific forum before acting.

If there are any advanced alien beings out there however, they are keeping very quiet. The purpose of the “Sound of Silence” meeting is to discuss why the SETI project has, thus far, not found anything compelling to suggest there are any life forms transmitting their presence to the universe.

“Have we been looking in the wrong place, at the wrong time, in the wrong way?” asks Prof Paul Davies of Arizona State University. “The purpose of this meeting is to brainstorm some radically new thinking on the subject.“

Source: Telegraph.co.uk

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  • Harry Mays

    Considering the the utterly vast distances I do not think so. Let me know if we hear from anybody.

  • Kohr-Ah

    Who’d want to know us?

    We’re the equivalent of the neighbours everyone gossips about in hushed whispers.

    At the risk of sounding like some of the advanced races in much of the Sci-Fi we all know and love; we’re too primitive to make contact with.

    We’re still bogged down by religion; with most preaching peace, but advocating and practicing violence. Our leaders are little better, tending to think in terms of the next election, and how to further enrich themselves at the expense of the public. Oh, yes; and we also still assign artificial values to material goods, as if they mean more to us than people.

    If foolhardy extraterrestrials landed on the White House lawn tomorrow, they’d probably greet us with open arms, as opposed to our fake smiles, and snipers on the roof. At every turn (as many here have said), we’d be trying to figure out how best to kill them and rob them of their technology; all while trying to make it look like an accident.

    Why are we worth knowing?

  • Whoever

    I have news for you hucksters. Regardless of how advanced or how backward a civilization may be, the bottom line is that they all share one thing in common.

    Namely, that it’s first priority is survival above all.

  • Paul in Cal

    Humans were placed here to propogate and consume the earth’s food supply until we’re all fat, lazy and number in the billions. We need to send a signal that we are ready to eat before we exterminate ourselves, which would have wasted the efforts to grow us for dinner in the first place. Turns out dinosaurs and fish don’t taste as good as humans.
    That’s where the mayans went.

  • http://www.universetoday.com/12745/are-we-sending-a-bit-too-much-information-into-the-cosmos/ Bjarne Nykvist

    Thank you Chuck Lam and Cato for confir-ming my long-term doubt concerning the ne-
    cessary rf power. I once tried roughly to esti-mate the rf TX-power necessary for reaching
    100 ly´s into the cosmos from Earth. At that distance there could probably exist intelligent
    listeners according to the Drake formula. I got
    a TX-power of at least E20 watts when consi-
    derig vacuum qualities for the space. It may
    be wrong, but rises premonitions of rf power
    not feasible on Earth to day. If we are not ca-
    pable, neither Aliens very likely are not. As
    long as authorities avoid discussing this es-
    sential and logic matter, it should be accep-
    table that listening for alien signals looks to be very worthless.
    Kind regards !
    Bjarne

  • MJG

    Any civilization sufficiently advanced as to be able to intercept our TV and Radio leakage will probably not want to have anything the hell to do with us. Especially if they see any “reality” shows.

  • http://www.cplire.ru/html/ra&sr/index.html Alexander Zaitsev

    Yesterday I placed in arxiv

    Detection Probability of Terrestrial Radio Signals
    by a Hostile Super-civilization

    http://arxiv.org/abs/0804.2754

  • Chuck Lam

    It appears doubtful that contact of any kind will ever occur between intelligent life-forms. Cosmic distance and most likely rarity of intelligence capable of the most advanced means of communication is responsible for SETI’s failure.

  • Joseph

    Maybe the reason why no aliens have responded to us because of the same reason we shouldn’t contact them. They probably think by sending information to another species in the universe that they may be attacked by them.

  • Joseph

    And not to mention, if there is intelligent life out there, maybe they think that we are not intelligent enough for them to contact us.

  • Pingback: Could Active-SETI Learn From… Twitter? - Astroengine.com

  • chris harding

    Dear Sir(s) etc.:
    About 9 years ago they managed to send a beam of photons(light) accross a lab at x300 times light speed by passing the beam through a cloud of cessium atoms. This was timed on atomic clocks and is real. Would it not make more sense to transmit at x300 plus times the speed of light(x300 c) to Aliens.
    They would of course have the technology to detect such transmissions. Further by entangling such atoms with those in the lab we would be casting a net in the cosmic sea which would allow future instantaneous message exchanges for the future !. Such a system would allow teleportation of Q-bits of data at infinite speeds. With even our current attempts at building Quantum computers we’d be `within range’ of being able to have a meaningfull exchange with them. Our super-smart aliens(or `been there before us’) would then recognise that we had arrived.
    Best Regards
    Chris. Harding
    Australia.

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